The Ursula Franklin Reader: Pacifism as a Map

By Ursula Franklin and Michelle Swenarchuk

Feminist, educator, Quaker, and physicist, Ursula Franklin has long been considered one of Canada’s foremost advocates and practitioners of pacifism. The Ursula Franklin Reader: Pacifism as a Map is a comprehensive collection of her work, and demonstrates subtle, yet critical, linkages across a range of subjects: the pursuit of peace and social justice, theology, feminism, environmental protection, education, government, and citizen activism. This thoughtful collection, drawn from more than four decades of research and teaching, brings readers into an intimate discussion with Franklin, and makes a passionate case for how to build a society centered around peace.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Between the Lines
• Release date: Oct 15, 2006
• ISBN: 9781926662701

Ursula Franklin

Ursula Franklin is an experimental physicist, University Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, the recipient of the Pearson Medal of Peace, and a Companion of the Order of Canada. She is the author of The Real World of Technology, and delivered the annual prestigious Massey Lectures on the subject in 1989.

Book preview

THE URSULA FRANKLIN READER

THE

URSULA FRANKLIN

READER

PACIFISM AS A MAP

URSULA M. FRANKLIN

9781926662701_0003_005

INTRODUCTION BY

MICHELLE SWENARCHUK

BETWEEN THE LINES

TORONTO

The Ursula Franklin Reader

© 2006 by Ursula M. Franklin

First published in 2006 by

9781926662701_0004_002

Between the Lines

401 Richmond Street West, Studio 277

Toronto, Ontario M5V 3A8

1-800-718-7201

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be photocopied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of Between the Lines, or (for photocopying in Canada only) Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario, M5E 1E5.

Every reasonable effort has been made to identify copyright holders. Between the Lines would be pleased to have any errors or omissions brought to its attention.

Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

ISBN 978-1-926662-70-1 (epub)

ISBN 978-1-926662-71-8 (PDF)

ISBN 978-1-897071-18-2 (print)

Cover and text design by Jennifer Tiberio

Author photo: courtesy of Ursula M. Franklin

All other cover photos: iStock International Inc.

Between the Lines gratefully acknowledges assistance for its publishing activities from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program and through the Ontario Book Initiative, and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program.

9781926662701_0004_003

To Fred Franklin, my husband, friend, and

companion for more than half a century

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION, BY MICHELLE SWENARCHUK

Pacifism

Women and Feminism

Technology

Nature and Ecology

Citizens and Government

Education

The Signposts on Ursula Franklin’s Pacifist Map of the World

A Brief Overview of Pacifist and Quaker Belief and Action

PRELUDE

PART ONE THE PURSUIT OF PEACE: PACIFISM AS A MAP

The Nature of Conscience and the Nature of War

Reflections on Theology and Peace

The Indivisibility of Peace

Quaker Witness in a Technological Society

What of the Citizen?

Women and Militarism

Nuclear Peace

Peace as an Ongoing Issue

Peace, Technology, and the Role of Ordinary People

Global Justice Chez Nous

How the World Has Changed

On the First Anniversary of September 11

PART TWO HERE AND NOW: THE TECHNOLOGICAL WORLD

Environments versus Nature

Earth without a Creation Myth: The View from China

Silence and the Notion of the Commons

Liberty, Technology, and Hope

New Issues of Access to Justice Raised by Modern Technology

New Threats to Human Rights through Science and Technology: The Need for Standards

PART THREE COPING WITH AND CHANGING THE TECHNOLOGICAL WORLD

New Approaches to Understanding Technology

All Is Not Well in the House of Technology

Every Tool Shapes the Task: Communities and the Information Highway

Beyond the Hype: Thinking about the Information Highway

Will Women Change Technology or Will Technology Change Women?

Stormy Weather: Reflections on Violence as an Environment

Commemoration for the Montreal Massacre Victims

Legitimate Expectations

What Is a Green Energy Policy, and What Would We Have If We Had One?

Citizen Politics—New Dimensions to Old Problems: Reflections for Jane Jacobs

Citizen Politics: Advocacy in the Urban Habitat

Planning and the Religious Mind: Der Mensch Denkt, Gott Lenkt

On Speaking Truth to Planning

PART FOUR TEACHING AND LEARNING

Reflections on Science and the Citizen

The Second Scientist

The Sandbox and the Tools

The Real World of Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education.

Letter to a Graduate Student, from Ursula Franklin

Looking Forward, Looking Back

Personally Happy and Publicly Useful

Teaching as Activism: Equity Meets Environmentalism

FROM URSULA’S BOOKSHELF

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

IT IS AN IMPOSSIBLE task for me to acknowledge fully the individual help, support, and stimulation that enabled me to carry out the work assembled in this Reader. Each talk or essay represents my response to a specific situation, and I am forever indebted to all who were part of providing context and occasion: those who have agreed, and—even more so—those who have disagreed with my thoughts.

Yet, without the ongoing love and support of my family, my religious community, and my sisters of the women’s movement, I would not have had the strength and endurance to engage in this work for so long.

The actual creation of this Reader could not have taken place without my friendship with and the co-operation of Michelle Swenarchuk. Our wide-ranging conversations, our discussions and examinations of individual papers, and our decisions on their selection and ordering shaped this book. Michelle’s refusal to be acknowledged as a co-author should not distract from her central role in the development of this collection. To her go my profound thanks.

The massive undertaking of turning a stack of reprints into an editorially and technically defensible manuscript was flawlessly accomplished by my friend Ruth Pincoe. I cannot think of anyone who could have brought the same degree of professional skill and personal empathy to the task, and I am most grateful for her help and advice.

Kathy Chung, on whose assistance and computer savvy I have depended for many years, became an integral part of the project and contributed much to it.

The Three Guineas Foundation provided financial help for the preparation of the electronic manuscript, which we acknowledge gratefully.

And then there is Massey College. Its hospitality and openness continue to sustain me, and the generosity and friendship of Master John Fraser and Elizabeth MacCallum have made my work both possible and enjoyable. The publication of this Reader is an expression of my indebtedness to the ideals of Massey College.

INTRODUCTION

BY MICHELLE SWENARCHUK

URSULA FRANKLIN’S words and actions have long been an inspiration to me, and several years ago I began to urge her to publish a collection of her non-scientific social writings. I believe they contain a wealth of knowledge and a loving perspective on the human and natural condition of our time. Our collaboration on this project, an honour and joy for me, has included many wide-ranging discussions of interlinked themes: peace, Quaker faith practice, women’s equality, nature, government, citizen’s activism, and education.

Early in our discussions Ursula identified the basis of her perspective—her pacifism and her belief that only a commitment to ethical means and non-violence in all human actions can address the problems of society and lead to a peaceful, just, and egalitarian world. From her I learned of the Quaker focus on the importance of individual conscience-based decision-making, not only when it comes to the choices of daily living, but also in acting on the most momentous national and global issues. Quakers do not apply dogmatic instruction to life’s questions. Rather, they use a collective process of prayer, study, and discernment to guide their decisions.

In current political discourse the idea of pacifism tends to be either dismissed as naïve and unrealistic or disparaged as connoting appeasement and passivity in the face of force. There is no reflection in mainstream political thinking of the Quaker idea that commitment to a moral means of problem-solving provides a creative impetus to resourceful, non-violent, and humane political policy, even though, as Ursula makes plain, the dysfunctionality of violence as a means of problem-solving stares us in the face.

When Ursula asked me to provide an introduction to the articles to make the argument for the practice of pacifism, I came to realize that her viewpoint has a second foundation—her feminism, born of her life experience as a woman and as a scientist, engineer, university professor, mother, and member of an embracing women’s community. In all of these spheres she has asked questions that are different than those asked by her male colleagues, and she has provided different answers using language and imagery from women’s experience.

Ursula considers that her pacifism provides an alternative map to view the world, illuminating the present and past in a different light. My role here is to highlight the salient features of her map: particular aspects of the human and natural world that become visible when viewed from this perspective. I believe that on this map and with her words and actions we can recognize a creative pathway towards a more hopeful world.

PACIFISM

For members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), pacifism is not a prescription for "passive-ism."*

Given that they reject participation in war and the use of violence for any cause, Quakers are committed to an active engagement in the pursuit of peace and justice. They consider that non-violent means provide a positive witness to the better way.

Friends have made important contributions to scholarship regarding war, the causes of war, and approaches to peacemaking. Over time their refusal to participate in war helped lead to the modern right of conscientious objection to military service. More recently they have attempted to extend the principle of conscientious objection to the conscription of tax revenues for military preparations in times of peace. Quakers are committed to acting in the world, believing that wherever life places us, there will be needs and openings for our witness, and what is required of each of us is to be present where we are. Friends believe they have an obligation to refuse to co-operate with laws that violate God’s laws and to do so openly. Such actions may encourage others to follow their convictions and support them in their struggles. Friends are advised to live adventurously.

Ursula Franklin’s pacifism is grounded in her experience of war, her Quakerism, and her life experience as a woman.

Ursula was born in Germany and spent time as a prisoner in the Nazi concentration camps, where she lost members of her family. She experienced the bombing of Berlin and later the Soviet occupation. She became convinced of the dysfunctionality of war, that war doesn’t work, even for the winner. Ever since, she has been engaged in the pursuit of peace and justice, contributing to Quaker thought and practice on war and peacemaking, and on the understanding of violence.

Ursula has described the benefits she gains from her membership in the Religious Society of Friends, including her joy in attending the Meetings for Worship, when the collective silence is enormously powerful. Someone may rise and speak "about something that had just entered your mind. It’s an uncanny thing, but the strength of collective silence is probably one of the most powerful spiritual forces. She describes Quaker thought as a theology of peace that focuses primarily on discernment of means—a discernment that is equally valid for decisions on small and on large issues. In such a theology of peace one would find the practical manifestation of the prophetic voice; such focus on means would expose the common roots of many issues that are now addressed separately."

She has asked, If I were accused of being a Quaker, would there be enough evidence to convict me? and in response emphasizes that the only evidence of her Quaker faith is the testimony of daily decisions and personal conduct. Applying these standards in everyday life in the modern technological world is really very, very difficult.

The goal of Ursula Franklin’s practice of pacifism is to contribute to building a society of peace, justice, and equality for all, step by bloody small step.

To Ursula, peace is not so much the absence of war but the presence of justice. Peace is the absence of fear, whether it is a fear of the knock on the door at night, a fear of hunger, unemployment, or danger to our children, or a lack of a public sphere in which the issues of peace and justice will have priority over the issues of profit. Peace is a commitment to the future, and it is a necessity for an equal society in which people have control over much of their own lives.

Peace requires justice, the hinge of a civilized society, and can only be achieved through the persistent application of social truth and justice and the strong and intelligent application of love. Both peace and justice are indivisible. They must be equally attainable for one’s loved ones and allies and for all the people you can’t stand. The unconstrained practice of justice is the price of peace. If you want peace, work for justice. Ursula envisions a peaceful world in which society would work somewhat like a potluck supper, where everyone can contribute their work and care and in turn receive nourishment and friendship. For a successful potluck supper, a diversity of offerings is essential.

Throughout her lifetime, in keeping with the Quaker practice to be present where you are, Ursula Franklin has been engaged in scholarship and activism to build peace.

Ursula Franklin’s writings reflect her continuous reassessment of changes in the world from the Second World War through the Cold War and post–Cold War periods to the aftermath of September 11, 2001. She has addressed the arms race, the potential for global destruction from nuclear war, and the borderless threat of nuclear fallout. Working with the Voice of Women, she made proposals to Parliament regarding Canadian foreign policy. She worked to bridge the gap between East and West during the Cold War through delegations to meet women of the Soviet Union and North Vietnam. She participated in Friends’ successful efforts to send medical supplies to all parts of Vietnam during the war there. She also contributed to Friends’ unsuccessful attempts to persuade the Government of Canada to permit the redirection of the military portion of personal income tax to non-military uses.

As a physicist she refused to participate in classified research and all work that could be adapted to warfare. Sharing her scientific knowledge with non-specialists, Ursula helped them to become citizen scientists engaged in public policy discussions. Later she identified the dangers of a new form of oppression—globalized economics and privatization—and in recent years has addressed the world of terrorist attacks and the U.S. military response.

We live in a world of violence and war, in which governments and corporations use fear and threats as a universal management tool, and the protection of citizens is used as a false rationale for war and arms production.

It is important to be clear on how we got here: we live in a mess created by men who did not listen. Their push for winning, meanness, and leanness led to the current strife-torn, degraded world; the means were wrong. In the long run the immoral does not work.

Although the dysfunctionality of systems of war and threat stares us in the face, we continue to live in a world dominated by violence. There was no peace dividend at the end of the Cold War, the legacies of which include a world awash in arms, senseless divisions between peoples, too few non-military perspectives on problem-solving, and the financing of costly high-technology military projects in lieu of productive public spending for human needs. Changes to military technology have resulted in wars that are endless and borderless, and are financed by a permanent conscription of public revenues.

As a physicist, Ursula Franklin has been acutely aware of the devastating potential of nuclear war, the ultimate threat. She has illustrated the irrational destructiveness of the arms race by comparing it to neighbours who deal with conflict by acquiring dogs for protection, eventually destroying their peaceful neighbourhood through vicious dogs and the accumulation of dog shit.

Ursula contends that violence is not a normal human reaction; rather, it represents an unacceptable response to change. To understand the prevalence of violence in our time, she reflects on atmospheric weather patterns, picturing two massive fronts moving towards each other, creating a zone of turbulence. What is occurring at this time is social change of immense proportions, with a transition from the Old Order, the hierarchical society of institutionalized dominance, to a new non-hierarchical world of equality for all, where women will be free to choose their own paths, and diversity is normal and cherished. We are living in the turbulent zone between these two historical fronts.

There is no way to peace; peace is the way. Effective citizen initiatives to build peace and justice must be based on non-violence and must emphasize ethical means in order to reconcile conflicting claims and needs and achieve society’s goals.

Non-violence is both a kind of power and a response to power. For citizen peace-builders to speak truth to power, our lives must speak truth through what we do and what we refuse to do. We need to focus on the means of private and public activity: to not be overly impressed with grandiose schemes and big promises, but rather to fathom the ways and means in which such promises and projects are to be realized. To make the moral dimensions of political decisions more evident, we must ask who may suffer or bear the burden of a decision, and who will benefit.

Prescriptions for non-violent solutions to problems are more difficult than are prescriptions for violence because non-violent responses arise out of a specific context. In our technologically prescriptive world, there is structural resistance to allowing people to use their judgment to find creative solutions. However, there can be a vast variety of acceptable, appropriate [non-violent] means to solve problems.

In considering how religious people can contribute to peace-building, Ursula urges them to recognize that the modern world is very different from the Galilee of biblical times. In the nuclear age we need to hear relevant arguments regarding the futility of war and the inappropriateness of threat as national policy.

There is a need to transcend the imperial approach to world problems and apply a co-operative, tolerant, confederated model.

Women can inspire movement in this direction through their feminist, non-hierarchical practices: co-operation, respect, and horizontal solidarity. These practices cross all boundaries and are based essentially on an understanding of means, and on the conviction that some means, including violence, are not acceptable.

The U.S. response to the attacks of September 11—identifying an enemy, increasing violence, and failing to look for the root causes of the attacks—cannot provide security; security can only come from understanding and discernment, leading to changes that ensure justice for all peoples.

Abhorring the violence of the September 11 attacks, Ursula suggests that an alternative approach in considering these events is to see them as a social earthquake. Such an interpretation would have led to a search for the root causes of the events, and for actions to address them, rather than to a war on terror. We need to get rid of the notion of the enemy, because the notion of the enemy prevents us from understanding the cause of a social earthquake, much like the belief in angry gods once blocked an understanding of natural earthquakes. The notion of the enemy makes constructive learning almost impossible. Ursula questions whether those involved in violent attacks would have chosen other ways of acting on their convictions if they had seen real prospects for peace and justice in their countries.

A Canadian response to war and terrorism must be legal, peace-building, open, and reciprocal, based on a recognition that security can come only from justice and that there needs to be justice for all. Canada must pay attention to the means of its response, recognizing the dysfunctionality of the threat system. The South African liberation strategy, in which the oppressed themselves made requests for economic sanctions, is an important model.

A time of quiet can help encourage people to think. Or a day of mourning can offer an opportunity for us to shut out the trivia and look at our resources, remembering that children are more important than faster airplanes, and that most religions hold that all people matter equally.

WOMEN AND FEMINISM

As a pacifist, Ursula believes that the struggles for women’s rights and against all forms of militarism are two sides of the same coin: the promise of a livable future.

Early feminists understood the relationship between militarism and the oppression of women. Many were pacifists. As well, men who opposed war often supported the struggle for women’s rights. Militarism is the prototype of structures of threat and violence, an internally consistent system of attitudes, perceptions, and actions which, when stripped of all its extraneous verbiage, simply says ‘Do what I tell you—or else.’ This system requires both military and political branches, and operates with our money and without our consent. Women who want a why not? world of respect and diversity should object to this threat system.

Women’s achievement of full equality with men is a necessity for the just and peaceful society that pacifists seek.

As a friend and colleague, scientist, teacher and mentor, supporter of women students, concerned citizen, and advisor to women in many spheres, Ursula Franklin has contributed to the advancement of women. She finds in feminist thought and practice a pathway to a peaceful, egalitarian society.

Feminism is a movement to fundamentally change the relations between people to a more caring, egalitarian, and non-hierarchical pattern. It is not a mere employment agency for women.

Feminism promotes a social and human environment that is fundamentally different from that of patriarchy. It promotes a different way for people to live together; it is not merely patriarchy delivered by lady patriarchs. The values and potentials of nonhierarchical structures hold the key to equality and peace.

In contrast to patriarchy, a feminist, egalitarian society would be peaceful, non-hierarchical, focused on co-operation and community-building, and equally caring towards all people.

Peace is the absolute necessity for an equal society in which people can live without fear and have substantial control of their lives. All human beings would matter equally, so that the well-being of fat cats and small people would receive equal weight in decision-making. In contrast, in today’s world the greatest equality across the earth is the equality of destruction, in which everyone becomes a victim.

A feminist society would be non-hierarchical, unlike a church, army, or university, in which people are ranked in relation to each other and rank is equated with competence in spite of the obvious practical experience to the contrary. The prevalence of rank is a relic of hierarchical societies. Ursula believes that rank and competition in male hierarchies is one of the reasons that men tend to have so few close friendships compared to women. Feminists favour a co-operative, non-competitive approach to tasks because women’s traditional realm—the family, farm, school—teaches that rank is pointless in dealing with many problems, such as the distress of a sick child.

The nurturing of community is essential to an equal society.

Ursula assures women moving into traditionally male work environments that it is not wrong to be kind, and to want to overcome loneliness, as community can do. Solidarity in the workplace among all women (scientists, engineers, librarians, secretaries, cleaners), regardless of their tasks, contributes to friendships and security. Women need to remember and stress the positive aspects of women’s culture, achievements, and resourcefulness to create a non-judgmental, non-pressured support of all women by all women, preventing assimilation of women into traditional male structures and mentalities.

The evolution of society from patriarchy to a non-violent egalitarian society is a long process, like the Reformation, and is catalyzed by ideas.

The long process of breaking down the medieval Old Order was inspired by new ideas of justice, equity, and human worth, and the belief that knowledge and competence can be accessible to all. The Old Order rests on a restriction of knowledge, and women’s struggle for access to education is part of the struggle against the Old Order.

If we practise equality by judging people as human beings, without labelling them, we will be able to achieve an equality of caring long before achieving political or material equality. We must particularly avoid the label of enemy, because the presence of an enemy means that government will divert resources from social spending to building armies and prisons. We may deeply disagree with people, but must not assume that these people are unchangeable.

To achieve a peaceful egalitarian society, women in power need to retain feminist values and not act like lady patriarchs. Women’s achievements must come about through means that ensure that others do not suffer from the success of women in power.

The conduct of women in power must be guided and informed by the collective experience of women when they were powerless and experiencing exclusion and discrimination. There is nothing inherently wrong with women and their values, including values that may make professional advancement difficult. There is nothing wrong with caring, with not being aggressive and pushy, and expressing the hurt of being treated unjustly. It is insensitivity and lack of justice and respect, not women’s response to them, that are wrong. Women moving into senior positions must not to be hypnotized by rank, but rather continue to extend care and friendship to all women, both those who are promoted and those who are not.

Women have particular contributions to make to scholarship, science, and technology, beginning with their choice of questions to study. What matters most in research is the initial question.

Feminists have underlined that research is a social process of study and experimentation. It is evaluated through discourse and leads to knowledge and understanding, which are usually accepted by society as fact. To Ursula, scholarly activities are like a sandbox controlled by boys, who occasionally allow girls to participate and use the boys’ toys (or tools). For women to ask different questions and to want the opportunity to study these questions is to assert, We want to use our own tools. Maybe we want to make our own facts. Maybe we even want to have our own sandbox. This challenge to legitimize different methodologies and vetting processes can be threatening to established hierarchies.

Feminist inquiries have done much to identify the limitations of the scientific method and its reductionism. Reductionist inquiries produce information that cannot simply be transferred to a broader context.

Researchers using the scientific method rely on experimentation to discover laws of nature. This process entails the separation of knowledge from experience, neglecting context and emphasizing abstraction. Feminists have identified the dual myth of the objectivity and neutrality of science. Any experimental design that reduces the number of variables being studied requires a priori selections based on the researchers’ views of the nature of the question. It is here that social and political biases enter the supposedly objective research designs. Most scientific experiments are insufficient for the study of complex problems, such as ecological pollution and the pursuit of international peace.

Women’s attention to context in problem-solving will provide the basis for important contributions to many fields.

Ursula Franklin agrees with psychologist, educator, and writer Carol Gilligan that context is more important to women than to men in developing problem-solving strategies. Women prefer to look at a problem from a broad perspective. They prefer to consider the context and arrive at a strategy that is appropriate rather than universal, whether in small daily situations or large research designs. Ursula considers that this is the seedbed from which women, through their historical and collective experience, will make major contributions to many fields.

Building on the work of other feminists, including Margaret Benston, Ursula Franklin proposes that women should develop new scientific methodologies and study questions that have been ignored.

Chemist and activist Margaret Lowe Benston advocated moving towards a different science, keeping in mind the limitations of reductionism. We need different approaches to study complex systems that can’t be broken up for study without changing their nature. Ursula proposes that women pursue new methodologies in the study of environmental assessments, the social impacts of technologies, and machine demography, and she calls for a much-needed feminist critique of technology, with guidelines for the design of non-hierarchical systems.

The creative scholarship of feminists is often constrained by funding systems.

Few scholars in Canada can decide on research projects on their own terms, because funding is dependent on granting agencies or the priorities of the private sector. The process for funding may eliminate many of the most creative ideas. When good ideas, particularly from the young, are stifled because of a concern that they won’t be funded, the system constitutes a mortgage on the imagination. Ursula Franklin imagines an annual conference on unfundable research, an invitation to imagine, to dream about the kinds of ideas that are now abandoned as unfundable.

For women in the engineering profession and in the universities there must be change, since What doesn’t work for women, doesn’t work. Period.

Observing the reluctance of some women engineering students to oppose the filthy, sexist, and racist rag published by the engineering society during her time as faculty member, Ursula realized how difficult it is for women to retain their values when entering the professions. They are like immigrants to a new country, people who work hard to establish themselves in a new milieu, and tend not to vote against the government that admitted them. But also like immigrants, women may feel a malaise caused by breaking ties with their natural community. One should not expect these women to lead demands for change, but change may be fostered by clarity, by building a feminist understanding of the nature of power and technology, and through community-building.

Ursula does not want to see women engineers become work-hardened, losing their acute sensitivity to discrimination or injustice. Changes needed for both women and men come most often through women’s efforts. For years, if women left a meeting because of their child-care responsibilities, the chairman would groan; men now do the same and receive approval, without appreciating how much struggle was required to gain that privilege.

Improving the status of women in universities requires long-term vigilance; salary gaps have recurred when new women have been hired at the low end of the scale and new men at the top. Ursula proposes that a multifaceted index of the well-being of women on campus be developed to evaluate their status and ensure long-term equality.

Ursula Franklin understands the hesitation that some young women feel about entering the environment of science and engineering.

The life and work of Margaret Benston illustrate that it is possible to seamlessly integrate scholarship, feminism, union support, and environmental concern. Young women need to understand the feminist critique of scientific methodologies and the political and social structures of science and technology.

Students may want to choose supervisors for their human qualities, consider studying neglected fields, and remember the joy of science. Women need to keep their feminist perspective—an important layer of the coat of inner security for protection from the chilly climate—and ally with other women.

Finally, Ursula suggests that when the male science world is tough and you find yourself surrounded by jerks, take an anthropological approach. Record the experience by taking field notes like an explorer who’s come upon a strange tribe. Observe the tribe’s customs and attitudes with keen detachment and consider publishing your field observations…. I know from experience that the exercise works.

Recognizing the prevalence of violence in the world, Ursula Franklin considers that Marc Lepine’s murder of fourteen women engineering students in Montreal in 1989 must be understood in light of how his action was related to the broader world.

In her statement of commemoration for the young women murdered by Marc Lepine, Ursula asserts that this terrible event cannot simply be treated as the action of a madman. Rather, we need to understand what contributed to Lepine’s state of mind, and also face the painful fact that the murdered women were abandoned by the male students. We need to examine what it takes in our society for individuals or groups to be abandoned, and what constitutes the opposite, solidarity. Who is your sister, what does it take to abandon her—a shot, a joke? We need to look at how Lepine’s action is related to the social climate around us, since "how people get mad, how that escalation from prejudice to hate, to violence, occurs, what and who is hated, and how it is expressed, are not unrelated to the world around us." We need to consider the availability of weapons, the prevalence of prejudices, the effects of jokes and harassment, and the necessity of respecting others (here, women in an engineering faculty); we need to consider their right to be there on their own terms, not just on sufferance, not just as if they were silently fulfilling requirements.

The massacre led to a quantum leap in reality recognition regarding the situation of women in engineering faculties across Canada, the recognition that "it could have happened at our university, in my class. The tragedy provided the first opportunity to name what was going on in engineering faculties by speaking about the chilly climate, bias, sexism, misogyny, and patriarchy. For Ursula Franklin the solution lies not in changing women to harden them, but in achieving systemic change in the profession, involving the elders of the engineering tribes" and other male engineers. Some progress was made in the five years after Lepine’s murders, but much remained to be done to make engineering fit for women, and not women fit for engineering.

TECHNOLOGY

Ursula Franklin’s pacifist perspective on technology begins by asking different questions and promoting different values.

She answers the very first question—what is technology?—by defining it as practice or how things are done around here, a definition grounded not in technical considerations but in the commonality of human activities. Recognizing that every tool shapes the task, Ursula asks very basic questions of modern technology: what does it do, what does it prevent us from doing, what don’t we do anymore because of it? Flying is now common; homemade meals and clothes are not. Her focus on human impacts leads her to identify the underside of technological change as well as its helpfulness.

Pointing out that technologies are value-laden, Ursula does not examine them according to the usual orthodoxy of how machines influence speed and efficiency. Rather, she asks how machines affect the well-being of all people and the pursuit of peace and social justice. Her point of departure is that the central priority of technology should be respect and love for people, but she perceives that most modern industrial practices are anti-people.

Ursula’s religious belief leads her to examine how technologies restructure time, space, and society over periods of time longer than a human lifetime. She believes we have long-term obligations as stewards of nature and of human society.

The religious viewpoint, with a sense of history and time greater than a human lifetime, recognizes the enormous scope of change brought about by modern technologies.

Modern technologies are creating momentous structural changes in society, of a depth and magnitude comparable to that of the Reformation. Many of these changes are irreversible. The ability to separate message from messenger (telephone, e-mail, fax), sound from its source (recordings), and images from objects, together with the speed with which information is transferred, has created a new reality. The manipulation of space and time has been one of the driving forces behind new and complex ways of doing things. Modern practices increasingly interpose things between people, and with new electronic technologies has come a blurring of concepts of space and local community. There is a loss of synchronicity in some of humanity’s most long-standing actions, a resulting great longing for meaning and fellowship out there.

Ursula Franklin identifies the prescriptive, controlling quality of modern industrial technologies.

Ursula’s pacifism led her to ask what could be learned about the political and social structure of a society from the nature of its technology. Her experimental observation that the capacity to cast very large bronzes in early China depended on a highly structured, centrally controlled production process led to her theoretical distinction between prescriptive and holistic technologies.

Holistic technologies are artisanal. They are used by workers who know each step of the production process and can exercise judgment, experiment, and constantly gain in knowledge.

In contrast, prescriptive technologies are externally planned, organized, and controlled. Such systems divide the production process into tightly specified parts. The work and the workers are regimented, with no room for judgment or experimentation. Prescriptive technologies have proliferated since the Industrial Revolution, ranging from the mass production of manufactured goods to nuclear projects, surveillance, and machine-based warfare. They are now so widespread that we are all enmeshed in technology-based systems of dominance and control.

Modern technologies have transformed warfare. Relying heavily on technical support, professional and permanent armed forces can be maintained merely through conscription of citizens’ taxes.

Technologies have changed the nature of war, both as an activity and as a social institution. Mechanized and automated systems now constitute the core of standing armies, requiring not conscription of people but rather national conscription of people’s resources through taxation. Military technologies and their development are capital-intensive, so governments must maintain the phantom of an external enemy, one that is cunning and threatening. They require truly ingenious and heroic technologies to justify the long-term high level of military spending. This creation of the enemy seriously impedes conflict resolution and reconciliation. War is no longer set apart in time, territory, and participants. Rather, the boundary between military and civilian activities has disappeared. Civilians are targets in war, and nuclear fallout presents a danger to everyone, everywhere.

Technologies provide the means for war transposed into another key: economic oppression.

At the end of the Cold War, war preparations were not dismantled. Instead of initiating a peace dividend, governments utilized the technologies of control and conquest for global competition on the battlefields of the faceless markets of electronic transactions. This war includes the familiar characteristics of propaganda, loss of lives, displaced peoples, and environmental destruction. The newly designated enemy consists of ordinary people—all those who build community and believe that people and nature are sources of meaning, and not merely commodities. This is a market-driven war on the common good.

The use of modern technological systems often means that